Deutsches Institut fuer Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) – Bonn

WECF participated in a panel at the workshop “Making Gender Equality Happen in Development Cooperation” organised by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE).

The senior advisor on gender Shireen Lateef from the ADB presented the gender approaches and activities of the ADB. Then German counterparts from BMZ (Sabine Lindemann), from GIZ (Sabine Gürtner) and from kfw (Inga Müller) provided insight into the policies of their respective institutions on the issue of gender and development. WECF (Anke Stock) finally presented the NGO position highlighting the needs of rural women and men in local community based projects and the different tools and guiding principles used to overcome gender gaps.

The discussion showed that different views existed on the categorisation of “gender projects” and on the need to enforce gender mainstreaming in every type of project. However, it was clear that more resources (including human resources in from of gender experts) were needed to really incorporate the issue within development work. WECF pointed out that specific financial mechanisms, in particular big funds, are not fit to meet the needs of women who often only wish to improve living conditions by covering basic needs, such as access to water and sanitation, or by receiving income generating appliances, such as solar fruit driers.